Genesis Poem by Goodness Tchibueze

Come, my friends, and sit at my feet,
So that you may pick from me a word
Or two, tho' centuries past this your fresh-faced environment
Would brighten the surface of your water
As a moonbeam floating on a river at night.

It less startles this wrinkling Age.
From a sea devoid of substance started i a world,
A world i built, which i sustain and retain,
Even after the passing of it to another hand.
I started by looming the garments which clad
Earth and Sky.At my bidding nature's eggs hatch.
I am endowed with might more than a thousand giants'...

You well reflect my abtruse form.
Though drawn from the dust - from whence comes
Your meat, and to whence you retire -
With the grace of being i honoured you and made
You a nest to hatch the other eggs of earth.
But a bid very explicit you failed to uphold,
And misplaced your honour.Now you bathe in your sweat,
And drown in the bowel of the deepest dust!
I gave you Earth as barn, the Sky as its cover,
But you made it a field, and the sky its rearer.
Know you not how healthy 'tis to spread out
Your ears to the ray of my whispers, like a flower to the warmth
Imbuement of the sun, than turning them inwards to the whispers
Of your heart which oft excite you to rebellion and frowardness?
Chew this and throwup the tart fruit
Which lifted the veil of quiet-sightedness
Off your face, and revealed the nakedness
Which was concealed, uncladding your eyes to glittering darkness.

For your unhardlineness, i stuck crude stars
In your palms; i charged you to scrape crudeness from those stars:
To forge, to burnish and to place them in the sky,
For yourselves and for others when sudden darkness
Meets the affairs of the sphere which you are a part of.
But your water steams from an earthen pot
On the tripodstand afire with the firewoods of Time.
So, you must vary your practices or produce other hands to aid
You accomplish this charge before the fire goes,
And the firewoods fade, and your water cools
And gives up steaming, and you are given to oblivion...
You are dynamic, your stars are static.